Unit

The Season has started. Forget débutantes coming out and flirting with chinless wonders at polo matches, races at Royal Ascot, and fancy balls. Nope, this is the PWS social season, and it’s more down to earth.

Over the next five weeks, we’re popping along to three events being organised in various parts of the country by parents, friends, and volunteers linked with the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association UK.

The first of this series of family get-togethers took place today in a London park.The Drake contingent was smaller than at first planned after I left my son at home due to him waking up in a thunderously foul mood (‘overtired’ after partying too hard yesterday). His dad, who this sentence could equally apply to, was also left behind and thus forced to deal with the ramifications of my executive decision that the day would be more peaceful and enjoyable if the girls legged it for the train on their own. I’m told he did stop crying, eventually. My son, that is.

We spotted a couple of blue PWSA UK T-shirts, my girl beaming because she was sporting one too. Introductions and re-introductions were made; my girl remembered names that I’d forgotten from last year. Then it was chatting time, as my daughter rambled on amiably, with the “people with PWS just like me”, including a sweet, nine-year-old girl who gave as good as she got in the Talking The Hind Legs Off A Donkey Stakes.

And within just a minute or so of meeting a new face - a 12-year-old boy - my girl was sprawled on a rug with him playing Deadly 60 Top Trumps, to his mum’s amazement. “He wouldn’t normally do that!” she exclaimed. “They definitely wouldn’t normally do that!” we both blurted out, when they were told it was picnic time and both said they wanted to finish the game first. (Although, to be more true to form, they had an almost instantaneous backtrack when they realised the import of what they’d just said and changed their story to: “Yeah, you’ve got the most, you’re the winner, where’s the food?”). 

But it’s something I’ve seen many times, and yet is always just as special and astounding - PWS kids buddying up, easy with eachother, on eachother’s wavelength, belonging. Things that don’t happen so easily in ‘real’ life with ‘civilians’. 

The Prader-Willi Army is an amazing unit.

Video is Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi (feat. Norah Jones) - Season's Trees.